Hookwolf lunged for her, only to find that the residual glass that remained on the ground was denying him traction.

This is a pretty versatile power, apparently.

His metal claws failed to find grip, failed to crack the glass, even with the heavy impacts and his impressive weight.  Closing the distance proved slower than he’d hoped.

Hm.

I’m sort of torn between POV bias and the fact that this is a dark-skinned woman versus a Nazi racist with a long list of homicides to account for (it’s quite possible that’s why she’s here), as far as who to root for. The fact that Shatterbird is also a super deadly member of the Slaughterhouse Nine doesn’t help.

Let’s just see how this plays out, I suppose.

He rose onto two feet, standing straight, and reconfigured his arms.  With spears as big around as telephone poles, he punched through thirty or forty panes of glass all at once, then did the same with his opposite hand.

Oh yeah, that works a lot better. Nice.

It was slow progress, as the glass constantly reformed and pieced itself back together a few feet ahead of him, but he was closing in.

Reforming barriers, such a pain.

She abruptly dropped the barriers and changed tactics.  The majority of the glass in the area formed into one shape, a cone of solid glass, pointing towards the center of the purple-red sky, two and a half stories tall.

Woah.

What’s the plan here, Shatterbird?

Raising one hand, she shot it straight up into the sky above, until it was just a speck.

Oh cod.

Crystal rain?

Cricket pointed, and he led the way with her following directly behind him.  As he walked, he wasn’t moving his limbs quite so much as it might appear at first glance.  Instead, he extended one growth of metal as he retracted another, only generating the illusion.

Huh, that’s neat.

A hundred new parts growing each second to suggest shifting musculature, a cohesive form, when he was anything but.  Only the core skeleton, the shafts of metal that formed the limbs from the shoulders or hips to his knees,  actually moved without retracting or extending.

He’s a rather shifty dude, that Hookwolf.

Glass rose from the ground to fit together into a window that floated in the air and he smashed through it with one of his forelimbs.

Shatterbird trying to say “stop, I wanna talk with you”?

Another barrier appeared, thicker, and he smashed that as well.  The glass began to form into dozens, even hundreds of barriers.

It’s like a whole street full of people carrying glass panes during a chase scene.

He quickly found one strike wasn’t enough to clear the way.

Hm, and if she puts a thick plate behind him too, she’s got him boxed in.

Also, she can probably shatter these plates again if she wants to, likely killing Cricket, or at least wounding her.

He pulled himself together, in his favored quadruped form.

Woof.

Looking up to the window, he created a tall spear from between his ‘shoulders’.  Cricket leaped out and caught the pole, slid down until she could hop off and land beside him, skidding on the glass covered surface.

Heh, that’s a neat way of getting down.

…

AU where Cricket works in the fire department.

She looked annoyed as she looked down at her shoes, raising one foot off the ground to investigate the underside. Glass had embedded in the soles.

Eesh.

So was all the glass out here affected too when the glass indoors turned its points upward?

He would have told her to ignore it, but he couldn’t speak.  For that matter, neither could she.

Worm is generally not big on characters speaking during fights, but with these two, if they get in a fight, there’s more reason for it.

“You come with me, then.  Menja, Stormtiger, I leave it to you to see to my Chosen.  See if Othala is able to help.”

Seems like a good plan.

But, uh, what are you going to do? Just walk over to where you believe the Slaughterhouse Nine to be and be like “hey guys wtf”?

“On it,” Menja said.

She speaks! And only six Arcs after we first met her.

Thin trails of blood ran down from the points where glass splinters had pierced her skin, but the damage hadn’t gone any further.  She stooped down and picked up Stormtiger in her arms.

Sounds like she’s a bit bigger now than during the sparring match.

“Cricket,” he called out.  “You alive?”

I hope so.

I mean, all of these are shitty people, but Cricket’s one of the cool shitty people.

He heard a sound, movement, and turned. She was gingerly searching through the carpet of weaponized glass shards for her artificial larynx.  She found it and pressed the cylinder to her throat.  “Alive.”

I like this device, too. It’s a good example of how helpful even comparably simple tinkertech can be. 🙂

“You said something was wrong.  What did you notice?”

“Sound.  The glass was singing.  Still is.”  She pointed at one wall.

Hm, yeah, sounds like I was on to something last time with the power working via vibrations.

Hookwolf followed the line to a building across the street and a little ways to one side.

His ears were ringing, but he doubted that was it.  It would be something subsonic that Cricket noticed with her power, then.

Yep!

He strode across the room to the windows and gazed out at the city block surrounding the home base of the Chosen.  Glass was still raining down from the sky, glimmering in the orange-purple light of the setting sun.

Still? How tall are the buildings around here?

That said, this would be such a cool visual.

Every window in view was broken, empty of glass.  Car windshields, streetlights and signs had all been affected, and the surrounding surfaces of wood, metal and fiberglass all bore the scuffs and gouges of the fragile shrapnel.

Seems like she’s got pretty good range on her power.

I wonder if she has more than one setting, though. Like, can she tone it down if she wants to?

Every piece of glass in the room suddenly stood on end, points facing upward.

Uh-oh. Can she control it beyond just making it shatter?

He gave it a moment of his attention, then turned to the world beyond the window, hoping for some glimpse of his adversaries, a clue about where they were.

I suppose I didn’t explicitly say this yet, but of course I think there’s only Shatterbird, just because that’s how these Interludes work. It’s completely sensible for Hookwolf to assume they’re all there, though, and it’d be smart to act as if they probably were even if he had reason to believe they weren’t. Just in case.